Globally, majority of young men and women have been labeled by employers as ‘unemployable’. This is not new as it was said years back and this is however, not something confined to professionals but all sorts of jobs. However, surveys also reveal that majority of young job doers are happy or reasonably satisfied with their jobs, even when they may like bit of this or that to get better. What does this mean?
First; why we are talking about jobs and ‘un-employability’ of youth? We are supposed to talk about marriage and ‘marriageability’ of young ones! Yes, there is a purpose. This job and employability is a good metaphor to understand the nuances of the contemporary state of marriages and the root cause of troubles in them.
Though there are complexities in the entire blame-game, we can say, the undercurrent is that there seems to be huge gap between what job seekers think and accept as ‘good skills’ and what employers actually seek for good and satisfactory employability. This also means, in our milieus, things may seem nice and easy but the undercurrent is ‘mismanagement’ and ‘stressed-relationships’ between seekers and givers.
At the very outset, when we dig deep into this ‘un-employability’ complaints and actual scenario of the problem, we can see how there are more perceptional issues than real issues at the grassroots. Still, the trouble remains constant and gap seems to be widening between expectations about ‘idealism’ and availability of ‘realism’.
When we apply this paradigm to other milieus – this work space realism to social or familial space, we can easily see the realism is same bitter, stressed and mismanaged. Why and How?
From the point of view of modern-day marriage-needs and roles of men and women in them, even when there is no valid survey or no specific social research data to quote, the reality, which is there but not accepted is – a majority of young men are ‘unmarriageable’! May be, there are also good numbers of young women, who may well also qualify as ‘unmarriageable’ too…!
The realism in marriages, like in work space is –
Majority of young ‘eligible’ men, when they look at ‘marriage job’, they think and act like ‘employers’ and blame most modern young women as ‘unemployable’ (unmarriageable). Similarly, as women are also now ‘equal’ stake-holders in the ‘company’ or enterprise of marriage, they too think and act as ‘employers’ and also label most men as ‘unemployable’ (unmarriageable). Both may be right, if not entirely then at least majorly…
Now, the bigger issue is why employers feel that vast majority of employees are ‘unemployable’? They cite the biggest trouble as – The engineers or other graduates have good educational degrees and high scores with good institutions but they have little ‘hand-on’ skills and experiences, which modern complex enterprises require.
A very senior and reputed doctor in India said on national media that majority of young doctors, especially from private medical colleges cannot perform a normal child delivery as they are not provided ‘hands-on’ training exposure to it. This trouble is however, not confined to doctors and engineers.
Secondly, industry complains that most of young professionals have poor ‘soft-skill’ repertoire. This soft skill is critical modern-day need in enterprises which have complex work milieus and high stakes at quality maintenance to compete in global market supply scenario.
The employers also have major issues with the attitudes of young men and women. The youth on the other hand are complaining too, though overall feeling happy about the job they are assigned. Their take is that companies are not investing appropriately on their training, working conditions, etc. So, the trouble is not superficial, rather deep-rooted but still, not 100 percent real as we can clearly see, majority of issues in the problem are ‘perceptional’ – gap between perceptions of the two sides.
The same trouble is in marriages in all countries. This lack of ‘hands-on’ skills and ‘soft-skills’ are also major destroyers of marriages. Though there are no valid data from either government or private groups, individual researches maintain that three chief reasons for growing troubles in contemporary marriages all over the modern milieus are –
Like job market, modern economic enterprises have changed drastically and in them, jobs require a different set of skills, which are not being imparted by educators. Same with marriages. We need to understand it. The employers want ‘Industry-ready’ employees and do not want to invest time and money on training young employees, as per their specific needs. Employers complain that educational institutions have syllabuses and educational standards, which are not ‘Industry-Oriented’.
The youth however have good reasons to complain that most employers have bias against them and usually employers have ‘misconceptions’ about contemporary ‘youth-attitudes’ and youth-orientations’.
Almost similar is the situation in matrimonial domain. And, this is not only a modern day trouble but has been there since ages. Men were traditionally in the seat of ‘employers’ and they always complained about ‘poor employability’ of women in marriages. Most men, as ‘employers’, wish to have a ‘ready-to-go’ employee. They are already marrying late and have little time and space to accept and allow that in all employer-employee relationship, time and space need to be invested appropriately to work out excellence and optimality. Many modern working women, who are now financially independent, also find themselves in the seat of ‘employees’. They apply the same stupid benchmarks about ‘employability’.
Naturally, over 80% men and women are both ‘unemployable’ as well as ‘unmarriageable’…! Still, all such ‘unemployables’ are doing their jobs, earning good salaries from the very ‘unsatisfied’ employers and are happy too! Same with marriages…
We all – both men and women, especially the young men and women who are in marriageable age, have to understand and accept that marriage is one huge and very critical life-living enterprise for wellness and happiness. We all need to accept that even few decades back, when it was said that marriages were ‘happy-ones’ with almost negligible cases of divorces, in reality most marriages were in acute trouble. However, as women then were not ‘empowered’ and society was very unfavorable to women opting for dissent in marriages, let alone divorce, there was this misnomer that then the marriages were successful. Marriages have always been stressed and in poor management, like employability.
This realism leads both men and women to understand and accept two critical points –
Globally, those companies are doing excellently, who believe in work as partnership and symbiotic enterprise of humanity. There is no employer and no employee when it comes to good work. There are just partners, who together sit and understand each other, respect each other’s needs and sensitivities, work out structures for excellence and invest on each other – not only tangibles but primarily intangibles. Marriages are also enterprise of partnership, where best of synergies are required. The blame game must be replaced by mutuality with high emotional investments and accentuated mutual respect for each other’s sensitivities.
Excellence is a tough institution. Just because a man has sperm and a woman has eggs, they cannot and should not qualify to be a father and mother. Similarly, being a husband and being a wife is no automatic eligibility. You have to work it out well to qualify for the position. There may be some automatic positions of ‘eligibility’, however, to be truly ‘qualified’ for the same position is a tough challenge. We need to look at excellence of ‘qualifications’ and stop taking ‘eligibility’ as granted. Marriage is a great enterprise; both men and women need to get to it that this job gets done well…
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